Part 14 (1/2)
I sit at this moment in a window of what was formerly the archbishop's palace--a n.o.ble old edifice, with vast staircases and resounding arches, and a hall in which you might put a dozen of the modern brick houses of our country. My chamber is as large as a ball-room, on the second story, looking out upon the garden belonging to the house, which extends to the eastern wall of the city. Beyond this lies one of the sweetest views in the world--the ascending amphitheatre of hills, in whose lap lies Florence, with the tall eminence of _Fiesole_ in the centre, crowned with the monastery in which Milton pa.s.sed six weeks, while gathering scenery for his Paradise. I can almost count the panes of gla.s.s in the windows of the bard's room; and, between the fine old building and my eye, on the slope of the hill, lie thirty or forty splendid villas, half-buried in trees (Madame Catalani's among them), piled one above another on the steep ascent, with their columns and porticoes, as if they were mock temples in a vast terraced garden. I do not think there is a window in Italy that commands more points of beauty. Cole, the American landscape painter, who occupied the room before me, took a sketch from it. For neighbors, the Neapolitan amba.s.sador lives on the same floor, the two Greenoughs in the ground-rooms below, and the palace of one of the wealthiest n.o.bles of Florence overlooks the garden, with a front of eighty-five windows, from which you are at liberty to select any two or three, and imagine the most celebrated beauty of Tuscany behind the crimson curtains--the daughter of this same n.o.ble bearing that reputation. She was pointed out to me at the Opera a night or two since, and I have seen as famous women with less pretensions.
For the interior, my furniture is not quite upon the same scale, but I have a clean snow-white bed, a calico-covered sofa, chairs and tables enough, and pictures three deep from the wall to the floor.
For all this, and the liberty of the episcopal garden, I pay _three dollars a month_! A dollar more is charged for lamps, boots, and service, and a dark-eyed landlady of thirty-five mends my gloves, and pays me two visits a day--items not mentioned in the bill. Then for the feeding, an excellent breakfast of coffee and toast is brought me for six cents; and, without wine, one may dine heartily at a fas.h.i.+onable restaurant for twelve cents, and with wine, quite magnificently for twenty-five. Exclusive of postage and pleasures, this is all one is called upon to spend in Florence. Three hundred dollars a year would fairly and largely cover the expenses of a man living at this rate; and a man who would not be willing to live half as well for the sake of his art, does not deserve to see Italy. I have stated these unsentimental particulars, because it is a kind of information I believe much wanted. I should have come to Italy years ago if I had known as much, and I am sure there are young men in our country, dreaming of this paradise of art in half despair, who will thank me for it, and take up at once ”the pilgrim's sandal-shoon and scollop-sh.e.l.l.”
LETTER XXIX.
EXCURSION TO VENICE--AMERICAN ARTISTS--VALLEY OF FLORENCE-- MOUNTAINS OF CARRARA--TRAVELLING COMPANIONS--HIGHLAND TAVERN--MIST AND SUNs.h.i.+NE--ITALIAN VALLEYS--VIEW OF THE ADRIATIC--BORDER OF ROMAGNA--SUBJECTS FOR THE PENCIL--HIGHLAND ITALIANS--ROMANTIC SCENERY--A PAINFUL OCCURRENCE--AN ITALIAN HUSBAND--A DUTCHMAN, HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN--BOLOGNE--THE PILGRIM--MODEL FOR A MAGDALEN.
I started for Venice yesterday, in company with Mr. Alexander and Mr.
Cranch, two American artists. We had taken the vetturino for Bologna, and at daylight we were winding up the side of the amphitheatre of Appenines that bends over Florence, leaving Fiesole rising sharply on our right. The mist was creeping up the mountain just in advance of us, retreating with a scarcely perceptible motion to the summits, like the lift of a heavy curtain; Florence, and its long, heavenly valley, full of white palaces sparkling in the sun, lay below us, more like a vision of a better world than a scene of human pa.s.sion; away in the horizon the abrupt heads of the mountains of Carrara rose into the sky; and with the cool, fresh breeze of the hills, and the excitement of the pleasant excursion before us, we were three of as happy travellers probably as were to be met on any highway in this garden of the world.
We had six companions, and a motley crew they were--a little effeminate Venetian, probably a tailor, with a large, n.o.ble-looking, handsome contadina for a wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little, coa.r.s.e, good-natured fellow, with _his_ wife, and two very small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian corporal in full uniform; and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown language, and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double d.i.c.ky in front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and French to us, the contadina's soft Venetian dialect broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instruments, and our own hissing English added to a mixture already sufficiently various.
We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tavern, on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gaily eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six English families, whose chambers were only separated from the rough raftered dining hall by double curtains. It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses speaking English unseen. The contrast made us realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. The next morning, after travelling two or three hours in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a suns.h.i.+ne so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a black cloud.
The mountain behind us was capped with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the landscape. It was our first view of the _Adriatic_. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a celebrated _water_ for the first time--a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Ma.r.s.eilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can!
An hour after, we reached the border of _Romagna_, the dominions of the Pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and searched more minutely. The little village was full of the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers about them, sketched the heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these highland Italians are like North American Indians--the same copper complexions, high cheek bones, thin lips, and dead, black hair. The old women particularly, would pa.s.s in any of our towns for full-blooded squaws.
The scenery, after this, grew of the kind ”which savage Rosa dashed”--the only landscape I ever saw _exactly_ of the tints so peculiar to Salvator's pictures. Our painters were in ecstasies with it, and truly, the dark foliage, and blanched rocks, the wild glens, and wind-distorted trees, gave the country the air of a home for all the tempests and floods of a continent. The Kaatskills are tame to it.
The forenoon came on, hot and sultry, and our little republic began to display its character. The tailor's wife was taken sick; and fatigue, and heat, and the rough motion of the vetturino in descending the mountains, brought on a degree of suffering which it was painful to witness. She was a woman of really extraordinary beauty, and dignified and modest as few women are in any country. Her suppressed groans, her white, tremulous lips, the tears of agony pressing thickly through her shut eyelids, and the clenching of her sculpture-like hands, would have moved anything but an Italian husband. The little effeminate villain treated her as if she had been a dog. She bore everything from him till he took her hand, which she raised faintly to intimate that she could not rise when the carriage stopped, and threw it back into her face with a curse. She roused, and looked at him with a natural majesty and calmness that made my blood thrill. ”_Aspetta?_” was her only answer, as she sunk back and fainted.
The Dutchman's wife was a plain, honest, affectionate creature, bearing the humors of two heated and ill-tempered children, with a patience we were compelled to admire. Her husband smoked and laughed, and talked villainous French and worse Italian, but was glad to escape to the cabriolet in the hottest of the day, leaving his wife to her cares. The baby screamed, and the child blubbered and fretted, and for hours the mother was a miracle of kindness. The ”drop too much,” came in the shape of a new crying fit from both children, and the poor little Dutchwoman, quite wearied out, burst into a flood of tears, and hiccupped her complaints in her own language, weeping unrestrainedly for a quarter of an hour. After this she felt better, took a gulp of wine from the black bottle, and settled herself once more quietly and resignedly to her duties. We had certainly opened one or two very fresh veins of human character, when we stopped at the gates.
There is but one hotel for American travellers in Bologna, of course.
Those who have read Rogers's Italy, will remember his mention of ”The Pilgrim,” the house where the poet met Lord Byron by appointment, and pa.s.sed the evening with him which he describes so exquisitely. We took leave of our motley friends at the door, and our artists who had greatly admired the lovely Venetian, parted from her with the regret of old acquaintances. She certainly was, as they said, a splendid model for a Magdalen, ”majestical and sad,” and, always in att.i.tudes for a picture: sleeping or waking, she afforded a succession of studies of which they took the most enthusiastic advantage.
LETTER x.x.x.
EXCURSION TO VENICE CONTINUED--BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF BOLOGNA-- GALLERY OF THE FINE ARTS--RAPHAEL'S ST. CECILIA--PICTURES OF CARRACCI--DOMENICHINOS' MADONNA DEL ROSARIO--GUIDO'S Ma.s.sACRE OF THE INNOCENTS--THE CATHEDRAL AND THE DUOMO--EFFECTS OF THESE PLACES OF WORs.h.i.+P, AND THE CEREMONIES, UPON THE MIND-- RESORT OF THE ITALIAN PEASANTRY--OPEN CHURCHES-- SUBTERRANEAN-CONFESSION CHAPEL--THE FESTA--GRAND PROCESSIONS-- ILLUMINATIONS--AUSTRIAN BANDS OF MUSIC--DEPORTMENT OF THE PEOPLE TO A STRANGER.
Another evening is here, and my friends have crept to bed with the exclamation, ”how much we may live in a day.” Bologna is unlike any other city we have ever seen, in a mult.i.tude of things. You walk all over it under arcades, sheltered on either side from the sun, the elegance and ornament of the lines of pillars depending on the wealth of the owner of the particular house, but columns and arches, simple or rich, everywhere. Imagine porticoes built on the front of every house in Philadelphia or New York, so as to cover the sidewalks completely, and, down the long perspective of every street, continued lines of airy Corinthian, or simple Doric pillars, and you may faintly conceive the impression of the streets of Bologna. With Lord Byron's desire to forget everything English, I do not wonder at his selection of this foreign city for a residence, so emphatically unlike, as it is, to everything else in the world.
We inquired out the gallery after breakfast, and spent two or three hours among the celebrated master-pieces of the _Carracci_, and the famous painters of the Bolognese school. The collection is small, but said to be more choice than any other in Italy. There certainly are five or six among its forty or fifty gems, that deserve each a pilgrimage. The pride of the place is the St. Cecilia, by Raphael.
This always beautiful personification of music, a woman of celestial beauty, stands in the midst of a choir who have been interrupted in their anthem by a song, issuing from a vision of angels in a cloud from heaven. They have dropped their instruments, broken, upon the ground, and are listening with rapt attention, all, except the saint, with heads dropped upon their bosoms, overcome with the glory of the revelation. She alone, with her harp hanging loosely from her fingers, gazes up with the most serene and cloudless rapture beaming from her countenance, yet with a look of full and angelic comprehension, and understanding of the melody and its divine meaning. You feel that her beauty is mortal, for it is all woman; but you see that, for the moment, the spirit that breathes through, and mingles with the harmony in the sky, is seraphic and immortal. If there ever was inspiration, out of holy writ, it touched the pencil of Raphael.
It is tedious to read descriptions of pictures. I liked everything in the gallery. The Bolognese style of color suits my eye. It is rich and forcible, without startling or offending. Its delicious mellowness of color, and vigor and triumphant power of conception, show two separate triumphs of the art, which in the same hand are delightful.
The pictures of Ludovico Carracci especially fired my admiration. And Domenichino, who died of a broken heart at Rome, because his productions were neglected, is a painter who always touches me nearly.
His _Madonna del Rosario_ is crowded with beauty. Such children I never saw in painting--the very ideals of infantile grace and innocence. It is said of him, that, after painting his admirable frescoes in the church of St. Andrew, at Rome, which, at the time, were ridiculed unsparingly by the artists, he used to walk in on his return from his studio, and gazing at them with a dejected air, remark to his friend, that he ”could not think they were _quite_ so bad--they _might_ have been worse.” How true it is, that, ”the root of a great name is in the dead body.”
Guido's celebrated picture of the ”Ma.s.sacre of the Innocents,” hangs just opposite the St. Cecilia. It is a powerful and painful thing. The marvel of it to me is the simplicity with which its wonderful effects are produced, both of expression and color. The kneeling mother in the foreground, with her dead children before her, is the most intense representation of agony I ever saw. Yet the face is calm, her eyes thrown up to heaven, but her lips undistorted, and the muscles of her face, steeped as they are in suffering, still and natural. It is the look of a soul overwhelmed--that has ceased to struggle because it is full. Her gaze is on heaven, and in the abandonment of her limbs, and the deep, but calm agony of her countenance, you see that nothing between this and heaven can move her more. One suffers in seeing such pictures. You go away exhausted, and with feelings hara.s.sed and excited.